


Thorns and White Roses

by xamuletx



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Tim Drake-centric, ivy!tim, with art
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-12-30 15:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18318449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xamuletx/pseuds/xamuletx
Summary: Thorns will always protect what is theirs and a white rose means love beyond death.If there's one thing Tim has learned from the Green, it's that Nature always survives.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoy reading!!

Marc LeGrande spat out a tooth and gave Batman a bloody smile.

Growling, the hero had to refrain himself from throttling the dying botanist, “Where is he?!”

“He's dead.” The man wheezed, “He didn't survive the experiments. His body was dumped weeks ago.”

“No…” Gasped someone from behind the hero. Batman turned to find his sons partially through the doorway, frozen at the news.

Turning back to the prone man and breathing through the rage, he barely managed to grit out, “Where?!”

But the botanist was already dead.

\----

Tim wakes with a gasp, too quickly and disorienting, which morphs into a moan of pain as he grabs his throbbing head. A second later, he remembers the agony, the needles and the crazy botanist's grin. Tears prick his eyes at the memory but even those seem to hurt.

He groans again, feeling it reverberate through his body and attempts to stand. His knees buckle though and in the split second of his fall he realises that he's probably not going to be able to catch himself.

But the ground never comes and Tim opens his eyes to find himself caught by a vine as thick as a tree trunk.

Startled, he flies backwards away from the plant but trips on an unearthed root. Again, he finds himself aided by another vine which loops under his legs so that he sits on it rather than fall.

Breath stuttering in his chest, Tim reaches down to pat the vine in a bewildered sort of way and it's then that he notices the lack of gloves on his hands which he distinctly remembers wearing during his encounter with LeGrande. His eyes widen and he springs up, looking down at himself and panicking.

_My skin is green. Oh god. Why is my skin green? Where's all my gear? Where's Bruce? Why am I surrounded by plants? Why do I look like Poison Ivy?_

Further and further he descends into hysteria, pulling at the thin vines and leaves on his body, oblivious to how much it hurts and causes most of the plants around him to visibly recoil.

In his state, though, he fails to notice the thorns winding their way across the ground towards his feet, fails to notice as they flutter across his bare feet and then curl their way up the back of his calves and between his thighs. He only notices them when they begin to dig in, completing their circuit around his abdomen and neck, pressing into his skin and making him focus on the sharp points of pain.

His breath stops before he shudders, falls to his knees caressing the intertwining stems across his body.

 _Is this how Ivy felt?_ He wonders and then pauses when he hears, feels a humming in his body. He looks at the ground and at the foliage around him, how it leans toward him, covering him and protecting him. He reaches out to touch the bark of a gnarled tree to his left and almost jumps back when it practically shivers at his touch.

A moment of hesitation and then he shuffles closer to the tree, the thorns lifting from his skin but staying wrapped where they are and presses his hand more firmly against the ancient bark.

He feels it lift and ripple beneath his palm and before he knows it, his other arm is wrapped around the trunk and his ear pressed against the bark. Slightly delirious, he giggles as he listens to it groan and breathe and whisper, telling him it's history.

When it finishes, he lies on the ground, dazed and listens to the grass. It has a tiny voice and chirps to him, each blade singing together to make one sound over and over again. He sighs and relaxes into the ground. He startles a little, when he feels more plants cover him but just as quick he settles back down to listen.

For a second, he regrets ever fighting Poison Ivy. If only he'd known. If only he'd known what the flora had sounded like, what it had felt like, what it was like to listen to them.

After a while though, he extracts himself from the plants cocooning him and stretches, more relaxed than he's ever been. He's hit with a wave of shame, thinking Bruce would be disappointed but shakes the feeling off.

The thorns trace his skin like they have a mind of their own and he smiles as they tickle. He feels tired though, drained in a way that's both new and foreign but also familiar, like what he feels after a Wayne charity function but deep in his veins.

As he makes his way across the clearing, he can't help but wonder if he even has veins anymore.

The foliage parts without a word from him and the way they're humming makes him think that they want to show him something. He follows the path laid out for him, shaded by a dense canopy of leaves. It's only a couple minutes until he's brought to a new clearing filled with overgrown stone carved decorations.

He kneels down to what he thinks may have been a stone bench and his gasp is sharp as his fingers trace an insignia on the marble.

It depicts a wingless dragon curled in circlet of thorns. A Drake.

He knows this symbol and when he looks more carefully at the secret garden, he recognises the rest of it too. The plants hum and sing their song. _Is this ok? Do you want to leave?_

He pats the ground. _This is fine. We can stay_.

The plants breathe with him as he stands once more and he wills the plants to grow a bit denser, to hide this little haven with its marble sculptures and dirty greenhouse.

Bruce would never think to look here anyway, he thinks as he picks his way towards the glass shelter.

It leans heavily on one side and foliage rushes to correct it before he even finishes the thought. There's a little dried up fountain next to the doorway but Tim thinks he could get it working again with a little tinkering. It would be nice to have a water source for his little garden.

Plants invade the greenhouse almost as soon as he opens the door and he can't help but laugh at their eagerness to create someplace livable for him.

Branches and vines and leaves work together to create a throne-like piece of furniture but something about it feels wrong. Instead, he reaches out and coaxes his new family to arrange themselves into something resembling a nest instead.

A nest for a bird, he thinks ruefully. He steps into it, petals cushioning his steps and then his body as he settles into the green of his new home.

Tears prick his eyes again as he thinks of home, the Manor and the Batcave. The salt burns and he quickly wipes at his eyes to make it stop.

 _How long? How long has it been?_ He whispers to those around him.

 _Weeks_. They chitter back, _weeks._

A shaky breath. _Can you show me?_

 _Always. Always for you._ Is their answer.

He closes his eyes and sighs, feels his world sigh with him, then he sees.

It's strange. Seeing the world through his plants is disorienting. It's hazy and the plants try their best to recreate an image how he would see it but there's something just a little off. He gets used to the feeling pretty quickly; he becomes a part of the soil just as easily as the plants became a part of him.

His gaze flicks behind his eyelids and he sees the Cave. His thorns are far below the plateaus and platforms that compose the Batcave complex and it takes them a while to scale the rock face towards the artificial light but once they crest the top, it's easy to navigate the area from his own memory.

He passes close to the computers, thorns twining carefully around the machinery and climbing to gain a vantage point to look around the cavern.

Something calls to him, a sense ingrained into him to identify anomalies in his surroundings and the thorns follow, slithering across the polished floor, making their way round through the trophy gallery.

He's heading towards the Cases, he realises belatedly and then suddenly the thorns recoil, he recoils, at the sight of a case holding the Red Robin uniform.

White hot rage flares through him where he lies in the Drake's hidden garden, through his plants and for a moment all he sees is _green_.

When he comes back to himself, harsh panting audible in the greenhouse, he feels glass pieces fall to the earth. It's then that he realises that his thorns have crushed the Case. Cracks mar its surface and the glass he felt before were tiny chips falling away.

He breathes, clenches his fist tight and he feels it give way to nothing, glass shattering as it falls to the Cave floor.

His thorns retreat as he feels the vibrations of quickly approaching footsteps and when he opens his eyes back in the garden, he finds himself cradled by the foliage.

He feels numb, knowing that Bruce had so quickly put his memory away behind a glass screen, like one of his failed projects. He trembles and lets his new family curl around him, protective and warm and lets himself sink into the darkness.

\----

The Manor is quiet.

Its occupants move around robotically, shocked into a daze by the knowledge that their brother would not be returning. Even Jason and Damian, whose relationship with Tim had been volatile at best, didn't know what to do with themselves.

Bruce and Dick had run themselves ragged trying to find a body but eventually, they had to face the truth, they wouldn't find one.

The sons gather around their father as he puts Red Robin's gear away, each putting a momentum in the case of their brother. Dick calls the Titans and Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne is declared missing, presumed dead.

\----

When Tim wakes again, he feels better. Still angry and frustrated but better.

He sits just outside the greenhouse, back against the fountain and tries to compartmentalize what he's been through and think about what he wants to do next.

Despite what happened yesterday, he could return to the Manor but almost immediately, he dashes the thought from his head. There would be constant reminders that he was different, he'd never be allowed to patrol again and the family would cringe and keep him at arm's length. He'd rather they just hate him than pretend to care.

The thought takes root in his mind, if they hated him… but Tim can't find it in himself to pursue it. No matter the circumstances now, he could never hurt his family.

The plants creep about him and he can sense a certain approval in their humming, like they're glad that he's not holding onto the pain. It might be their influence but as he thinks about it more, getting angry and exacting revenge just seems a little pointless. He should be thankful he's even alive and can continue on; surviving and growing. On the other hand though, a small part of him, the remnant of humanity in him, wants to cling to his feelings.

Tim sighs, that's a thought for another day.

Now, he thinks as he runs a hand across the dirty fountain, he wants to fix this little haven. Making it into something beautiful would give him the time to decide what he's going to do.

It clicks suddenly, that he's in his own back garden and that he can get whatever he needs from Drake Manor, he can root around the garage and shed to find some tools.

As he makes his way out of the secret garden and over the overgrown manor grounds, the grass and wildflowers sway in his direction. When he drops a hand to brush over the plants, they rise to curl loosely around his fingers before letting him carry on. The old house rises up, old and just as foreboding as he remembers it was from over the top of the hedges that used to mark the edge of the manicured lawn. In reality, no one has stepped foot on the Drake grounds in years so there's been no need to make them look pretty.

He only feels a little bad for breaking into his own home, plants forcing their way into the locks and hinges of one of the old side doors that used to be used when his parents wanted to evade the paparazzi.

It's weirdly eerie walking through the dusty halls of his childhood home but he remembers the layout so the journey from the outside to the large storage room is quick.

As he enters though, there's a flash of green in the corner of his eye and he swirls to look for an intruder but only finds a mirror half-covered by a dust sheet.

Apprehension shakes his body as he pads across the room, catching another glimpse of his reflection in the exposed sliver of glass. His fingers curl uselessly in the air while he decides if he wants to see what he's really become but with that thought he frowns; he's changed but he's still Tim Drake.

He swipes away the cover in one movement, almost sending the mirror tipping to the floor. It settles, rocking from side to side and the white cloth falls from numb fingers.

There's nothing that could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him. It was one thing to look down and see what had become of his body but another to see himself fully in the glass.

He stoops, folding his legs beneath him to get a closer look. One hand grips the mirror to keep it steady and the other comes up to trace his face. There are some features of his face that look how he remembers; same ears, same nose, same lips but that is where the similarities end. His hair is still dark but has an undertone of hunter-green to it, like the depths of a forest at dusk and small vines curl around his jaw and ears, trailing down to connect with the thorns that trace his neck and shoulders.

What has his breath stuttering in the remnants of his chest though, is his eyes. His irises are a shamrock-green, foreign compared to their usual grey-blue. The sclera around them is black and the area around his eyes is just a shade darker like smudged makeup. Dark, thin vines spread like capillaries over his cheekbones and trace their way beneath his eyes and over his brows.

There's no denying that he has changed and though Tim felt panic well up in his chest before, the more he looks at himself, the more he feels at ease. Perhaps the certainty of the situation calms his troubled heart, stability is not something he is used to. With his plants, however, he can see himself actually putting down roots. He snorts at the pun and stands, refocused on his quest.

It's been awhile since he's been in this storage room and even when he was younger he didn't have much of a need to be in here but he finds some garden tools fairly easily. As he's walking back out, though, he stubs his toe on a box. He almost drops the equipment, wincing as he hops on one foot and turns to glower at the offending inanimate object. He pauses and tilts his head before putting the equipment down to get a closer look at the box.

He blows off a thick layer of dust on the cardboard, sneezes when it flies up into the air. A thorough rub over the lid reveals the product and… when did his parents buy an off-grid solar panel power kit? It puzzles him for a moment but then he shrugs, he can use it now at least.

He opens a window and gets the box over the ‘sill, coaxing plants up to catch it. Vines grab at the box and, satisfied, he closes the window before moving back into room, this time to rummage around for some wire and electrician's tools. He adds his findings to his garden equipment and hauls it back through the house and then outside. The solar panel box sits on shifting vines and more of them reach out to help him carry his things.

The walk back to his secret garden is quiet, the late afternoon sun warming his cool skin. Trees and bushes part to let him back into the clearing and he gently sets down what he's carrying, the plants following suit and receding into the ground to slowly lower their own cargo to the grass.

From his pile of things he picks up a notepad and pencil and starts listing what he needs to do.

1\. Fix fountain.

2\. Set up solar panels.

3\. ???

\----

It turns out the fountain is actually part of a natural spring and all it takes is asking the plants to clear out the dirt clogging the way. The water sputters through for a while before coming out steadily, splashing against the stone filling the clearing with a small trickling sound.

The solar panels are a little harder to set up, though his knowledge of electronics helps him so the task only takes a few hours. He asks the trees to lift the panels into their canopy and he winds the wires around their trunks, careful to make sure it doesn't hurt them. They seem fine with it though, in a content, accepting way like they know this is important to him.

After he's finished, he climbs back into the nest in the greenhouse and closes his eyes to rest.

\----

Tim finds himself surrounded by a churning green sea of foliage. It writhes and morphs but, strangely, he isn't put off by it. Instead it feels comforting like… like the plants of his garden.

 _Welcome, young one._ A hundred voices murmur. _We are glad to meet you._

 _Who are you_? He has to ask.

 _We are The Green._ It continues in the same soothing echo of voices. _We are Nature. We are every form of plant life on the face of the Earth. And You are Us._

He can't help himself when he asks, _What about Pamela Isley?_

 _She is Us too_. It hums sadly. _Angry, hurt and misguided but She is part of The Green too._

_Why am I here?_

_They need You_ , It says.  _And We want to teach You._

Tim's eyes widen. _Need me? Why? How?_

_A great cloud of terror will descend on Gotham soon. Your city needs You. We will teach you._

He can feel the Green swirl around him, churning in askance, seeking permission. Tim settles himself like when he used to meditate and imagines himself opening up for the ancient elemental entity. Between one breath and the next, he sees _everything_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A piece of art I got commissioned to motivate me to finish this story!! Hope you like it!! 
> 
> artist: @corvvid on tumblr

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr @eaglesofsparta
> 
> kudos and comments are always awesome to see and read!!


End file.
